As the biggest protest since the 2009 Green Revolution rages on in Iran, American feminists have been AWOL. And one-time aides to former president Barack Obama say President Trump shouldn’t say a word, either.
Since the protest broke out last month, we’ve heard not a peep from the women who gathered for the anti-Trump #womensmarch, who wore “pussy hats” to protest the so-called sexist president. Not even after an Iranian woman who bravely waved her hijab in Tehran was reportedly detained. With her required head cover tied to a stick like a battle flag, the unknown woman stood at a busy intersection and waved the cloth in front of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
She’s now the face of the new uprising — yet no one knows where she is. Disappeared.
In a bizarre twist, critics of President Trump and former aides to Barack Obama — who handed billions to the despotic rulers in Iran and allowed then to continue work developing nuclear weapons — are urging Trump to remain quiet (they aren’t president, he is!). Trump isn’t — quite the contrary — but they insist.
On Sunday, Obama’s former national security adviser Susan Rice tweeted out a New York Times op-ed by another former Obama aide, Philip Gordon, who was an assistant Secretary of State, headlined “How Can Trump Help Iran’s Protesters? Be Quiet.”
She offered no support to the protesters sick and tired of Iran’s iron fist rule, just an edict to the sitting president to “be quiet.” What an ego!
And Obama’s former Secretary of State John Kerry, the milquetoast who took over after Hillary Clinton, said Sunday on Twitter: “With humility about how little we know about what’s happening inside Iran, this much is clear: it’s an Iranian moment and not anyone else’s.”
The talking point had clearly been passed around on Sunday, because Ben Rhodes, a deputy under Rice, said: “… it seems lost on too many that this is about what Iranians want for Iran, and not about us.”
For her part, Clinton on Sunday said “I hope their government responds peacefully and supports their hopes.” Ah, there’s that “hope” for “change” again.
Feminists, meanwhile, are doing even less for their sisters in Iran. The National Organization of Women (NOW) wasn’t talking about the crackdown in women in Iran, but rather moaning about Trump’s education secretary with a retweet.
Not a word, either, from the Women’s Marchers. On Twitter, @womensmarch is instead hyping another gathering, this time in Las Vegas, for January 21 (warmer than D.C. and they can get some gambling in, to boot).
This isn’t lost on those who frequent Twitter.
With dozens dead and hundreds detained in Iran, you’d expect American feminists to get their sisters’ back — especially in such a repressive regime, where women can’t leave the house alone and must remain covered head to toe at all times. But not so — some American feminists actually argue that the hijab is empowering.
More, though, is the silence from the very top.
During the 2009 uprising, Obama turned tail and fled, even after Iranian freedom fighters begged for his help.
‘So now, at this pivotal point in time, it is up to the countries of the free world to make up their mind,” Iranian opposition leaders told the Obama administration in an eight-page memo. “Will they continue on the track of wishful thinking and push every decision to the future until it is too late, or will they reward the brave people of Iran and simultaneously advance the Western interests and world peace.”
Obama didn’t help and the uprising failed — hundreds or even thousands (no one knows) were killed as a result.
As 2018 begins, it’s the height of irony that feminists are silent and the players in the failed Iran policy of the past urge Trump to be quiet. Thankfully, Trump will do no such thing.
Well said, Mr. President.